Figure 6: Schematic summary.
From: The soft mechanical signature of glial scars in the central nervous system
1.5 weeks after injury to the rat cortex, brain tissue has significantly softened. Softening is mostly restricted to the site of injury, where collagen IV, laminin, GFAP and vimentin are upregulated. At later time points (that is, at three weeks PI), scar tissue elasticity somewhat recovers at the stab injury site but mild tissue softening spreads away from the scar, which strongly correlates with the dispersion of an increased number of vimentin-expressing cells.
